Mahalo

I’m leaving Mahalo because we’re leaving L.A…not the other way around. It was a tough choice, but I believe it was the right one.  I’ve built a team I can be proud of at Mahalo, and I have every confidence that they’ll do great things in the future. The truth of the matter is that I cannot manage this excellent team from a distance. A Lead Developer needs to be on site, dealing with the day-to-day running of things.  I cannot do that if I’m moving, pure and simple. There’s no drama, no feud, nothing like that…everything is ending on good terms.

I’m going to miss the whole company, no doubt about it. These are good, hardworking people. They deserve to succeed. I cannot wait to see what they are going to do next.

Leaving Los Angeles

I’ve written a little bit about why we’re leaving L.A. in a previous post, but there’s more to it that just economics and schools. Los Angeles might as well be a different planet when you’re coming from the midwest.  There are many who have moved here and loved it, and I can see why they would. The difficulty for use was that we did it with a family.  If Cathy and I had moved out here when we re newly married, I think things might have gone differently.

Some friends here told us what they’d like most: to own a small house with a good sized yard in a good school system. They followed that up with, “but this is L.A.”  As time went by, I heard this from other people — they all wanted what we took for granted, what we gave up to move here. And many of them had given up on ever achieving it, because “this is L.A.”

We’re moving back to our families, our oldest friends, to neighborhoods that we love, schools we know we can trust, and places that we’ve loved for years. We took so much for granted…that won’t be happening again.

People will poke fun about leaving the Big City, but that’s fine with me. Cleveland is home, and always will be.

New Eyes

Some folks have asked me if this move is bittersweet. No…not really. I achieved what I wanted to achieve at Mahalo, and I learned what I needed to learn from L.A.  I’m coming away better for it. If I never left Cleveland, I would always wonder what would have happened if I had. It’s been costly, yes, but I feel I’ve gained far more than I’ve lost.

I’m looking forward to seeing home with new eyes. That alone will be amazing.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

• Neil Diamond MusiCares Person of the Year
• Smokey Robinson Grammy Performance
• Stevie Wonder Grammy Performance
• M.I.A. Grammy Performance
• Kenny Chesney Grammy Performance
• Sugarland Grammy Performance
• Jamie Fox Ne-Yo Grammy Performance
• Carrie Underwood Grammy Performance
• Jay-Z Grammy Performance
• T.I. Grammy Performance
• Chris Brown Grammy Performance
• Adele Grammy Performance
• Kanye West Grammy Performance
• Jonas Brothers Grammy Performance
• Jennifer Hudson Grammy Performance
• Rihanna Grammy Performance
• Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Grammy Performance
• Kid Rock Grammy Performance
• U2 Grammy Performance
• Radiohead Grammy Performance
• Paul McCartney Grammy Performance
• Katy Perry Grammy Performance
• Coldplay Grammy Performance
• Lil Grammy Performance
• Justin Grammy Performance
• Best Rock Album 2009 Grammy Performance
• Best Alternative Music Album 2009 Grammys
• Best Country Album 2009 Grammys
• Best Pop Vocal Album 2009 Grammys
• Best Rap Album 2009 Grammys
• Grammy Awards
• Grammy Nominations
• 2009 Grammy Nominations
• Album of the Year 2009 Grammys
• Song of the Year 2009 Grammys
• Record of the Year 2009 Grammys
• Best New Artist 2009 Grammys
• 2009 Grammy Nomination Performances
• 2009 Grammy Performances
• Grammy Winners 2009
• 2009 Grammy Awards Photos
• Grammy 2009 Live Coverage

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

The plan for global domination marches on…

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Additionally, Mahalo has great election result pages for every state.  Check out the full list:

• Alabama Election Results 
• Alabama Exit Polls
• Alaska Election Results 
• Alaska Exit Polls
• Arizona Election Results
• Arizona Exit Polls
• Arkansas Election Results
• Arkansas Exit Polls
• California Election Results
• California Exit Polls
• Colorado Election Results
• Colorado Exit Polls
• Connecticut Election Results 
• Connecticut Exit Polls
• Delaware Election Results 
• Delaware Exit Polls
• Florida Election Results 
• Florida Exit Polls 
• Georgia Election Results 
• Georgia Exit Polls
• Hawaii Election Results 
• Hawaii Exit Polls
• Idaho Election Results 
• Idaho Exit Polls
• Illinois Election Results
• Illinois Exit Polls
• Indiana Election Results 
• Indiana Exit Polls
• Iowa Election Results 
• Iowa Exit Polls
• Kansas Election Results 
• Kansas Exit Polls
• Kentucky Election Results 
• Kentucky Exit Polls
• Louisiana Election Results 
• Louisiana Exit Polls
• Maine Election Results
• Maine Exit Polls
• Maryland Election Results 
• Maryland Exit Polls
• Massachusetts Election Results 
• Massachusetts Exit Polls
• Michigan Election Results 
• Michigan Exit Polls
• Minnesota Election Results 
• Minnesota Exit Polls
• Mississippi Election Results 
• Mississippi Exit Polls
• Missouri Election Results 
• Missouri Exit Polls
• Montana Election Results 
• Montana Exit Polls
• Nebraska Election Results 
• Nebraska Exit Polls
• Nevada Election Results 
• Nevada Exit Polls
• New Hampshire Election Results
• New Hampshire Exit Polls
• New Jersey Election Results
• New Jersey Exit Polls
• New Mexico Election Results 
• New Mexico Exit Polls
• New York Election Results 
• New York Exit Polls 
• North Carolina Election Results 
• North Carolina Exit Polls 
• North Dakota Election Results 
• North Dakota Exit Polls
• Ohio Election Results 
• Ohio Exit Polls
• Oklahoma Election Results 
• Oklahoma Exit Polls
• Oregon Election Results 
• Oregon Exit Polls
• Pennsylvania Election Results 
• Pennsylvania Exit Polls
• Rhode Island Election Results
• Rhode Island Exit Polls
• South Carolina Election Results
• South Carolina Exit Polls
• South Dakota Election Results 
• South Dakota Exit Polls
• Tennessee Election Results
• Tennessee Exit Polls
• Texas Election Results 
• Texas Exit Polls
• Utah Election Results
• Utah Exit Polls
• Vermont Election Results 
• Vermont Exit Polls
• Virginia Election Results 
• Virginia Exit Polls
• Washington Election Results 
• Washington Exit Polls
• Washington DC Election Results
• Washington DC Exit Polls
• West Virginia Election Results 
• West Virginia Exit Polls
• Wisconsin Election Results 
• Wisconsin Exit Polls 
• Wyoming Election Results 
• Wyoming Exit Polls

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

We have a new box in the upper left of the homepage which automatically cycles through the most recent news in a number of categories. Beneath that, we have a second set of tabs which display feature items, like How-tos, videos, game news, and crazy stuff we find floating around the Internet. Beneath that is a list of categories and even more stories to browse.

The crowning jewel of the new home page is the liveblog. We have folks updating it around the clock, and you can jump in to discuss the topics of the day with our guides via ustream (which will be streaming live video during breaking news), or via a chat client embedded in the page.

Media Coverage:

• TechCrunch: Mahalo Sets Out To Liveblog The World
• CNET: Mahalo gets live news ticker
• Silicon Alley Insider: Jason Calacanis Turns Mahalo Into A News Operation, Invites You To Watch

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

From the docs:

Attached is a simple import, export, and backup utility. Mahalo.com has been using this in production for several months to back up our HBase clusters as well as to migrate data from production to development clusters, etc. Simple MapReduce job for exporting data from an HBase table. The exported data is in a simple, flat format that can then be imported using another MapReduce job. This gives you both a backup capability, and a simple way to import and export data from tables. The output of a backup job is a flat text file, or series of flat text files. Each row is represented by a single line, with each item tab delimited. Column names are plain text, while column values are base 64 encoded. This helps us deal with tabs and line breaks in the data. Generally you should not have to worry about this at all.

HBase Backup/Export/Import Tool

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

• Developers and Senior Developers
• Hadoop and Hbase Developer
• MySQL DBA
• Unix Systems Administrator
• Administrative Assistant

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Hadoop: When grownups do open source | The Register

Hadoop is a library for writing distributed data processing programs using the MapReduce framework. It’s got all the makings of a blogosphere hit: cluster computing, large datasets, parallelism, algorithms published by Google, and open source. Every four days or so, a nerd will discover Hadoop, write a “Basic MapReduce Tutorial with Hadoop” tutorial on his blog with some trivial examples, and feel satisfied with himself for educating the world about a yet-undiscovered gem. Comparatively, very few people actually use Hadoop in practice, and those who do don’t write about it. Why? Because they’re adults who don’t care about getting on the front page of Digg.

Read on. It’s great stuff, and you’ll definitely learn something useful if your site needs to…well…scale.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Very nice! Thanks to Ray Slakinski for sending this my way. It made my morning.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Mahalo is looking for $10 an hour freelance, work-from-home writers to help us build excellent search result pages. Candidates must be excellent writers capable of writing perfect copy at a fast pace. Familiarity with online research, journalism, and wiki markup language are all definite pluses.

Mahalo is a human-powered search engine dedicated to delivering carefully curated search results featuring the highest quality, spam-free links available, alongside helpful and informative Guide Notes and Fast Facts about these search terms. Our motto is ”We’re here to help.”

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Not so, good reader. There are two reasons for my silence. The first is that I’ve been traveling: went to the Google I/O conference in San Francisco then to Santa Monica for Codejam V at the Mahalo Mothership. For more about my views on how Google I/O went, check out the interview with me over at the Command Line Podcast.

The second is that we’ve decided to move to Los Angeles. This one…well…it’s huge. We’re looking to get the house on the market as soon as humanly possible, which means that we’ve been painting, patching, and handling all the stuff we’ve been putting off for a while. It’s a tough market out there for selling a house, and we’re hoping to have it done soon so that we can be in L.A. by Sept 1. Too optimistic? Maybe. So far, things have fallen into place every step of the way, and we’ve been incredibly lucky to have a our families and friends helping us out as we prepare. The insanity of all of this is the reason I’ve been off the interwebs for a bit. There’s simply not enough time in the day anymore.

For those of you who know the area, we’re looking to settle in Sherman Oaks. My good friend Nicole took me on a tour of the neighborhood while I was out there last week, and I really liked the feel of the place. If you know anyone looking to rent a three-bedroom house out there, hook me up.

Finally, I’m dropping a little something into my podcast feed this week. J.C. Hutchins interviewed me for his Ultracreatives series. We had a great time, and I think it’s my favorite interview to date. I got to talk about a number of things that I rarely touch on in my blog or the shows I produce, so it was a real treat.

More on the move as it develops. Otherwise…it’s good to be back.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

We at Mahalo have had quite a few reports of Firefox 3 crashing when visiting Mahalo.com. (Here’s a video of it happening.) We’d love to get this fixed, but we are unable to duplicate the problem on our own machines.

If this happens to you, here is some information that you could send us to help us out:

1. Your Operating System and Firefox versions. Example: Mac OSX 10.4.11, Firefox 3.0RC1.
2. Whether you’re logged into Mahalo when it happens.
3. prefs.js. This file is found in your Firefox profile directory, and it contains any changes you’ve made to Firefox’s default settings. It doesn’t contain any especially private or personally identifiable information. (Where is my Firefox profile directory?)
4. If you can get Mahalo to crash Firefox in a clean profile (one without any personal information like passwords or an extensive browsing history), then sending us a ZIP of your entire profile directory would be extremely helpful. If the crashing happens in your regular, every-day browsing profile, please don’t send this to us if there’s any chance that it includes information that you don’t want anyone else to know, like usernames, passwords, or browsing history.

So if you’d like to help us fix this problem, send as much of this information as you can to chris@mahalo.com. Just remember: We’re all in this together. We don’t want Firefox to crash any more than you do.

UPDATE: From phuc_head via Twitter: figured why ff3 was crashing on mahalo.com, it was the ms silverlight install i had, uninstalled/reinstalled silverlight and it works now. Does this work for other folks as well?

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Is there anything more fun than sitting around, growing your hair, drinking a Bud while listening to Jethro Tull and pondering how to change the balance of power in the search world and unseat Google ?

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

In Jason’s words:

We’re looking for a really killer Systems Engineer here in Los Angeles to work at our very cool factory in Santa Monica where they will make their own hours (provided they at least make it in for the free staff lunch every day at noon , get whatever equipment they want, soak in stock options in the next big thing, and work with a team of totally kick-ass no BS developers who are KILLING it every day.

Interested? Get the details on Jason’s blog: Systems Engineer, Los Angeles.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

• GTA 4 Cheats
• GTA 4 Walkthrough

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

You might remember that we added a few [[[microformats]]] to the Profile pages in Februrary. This is another step in that direction. The goal is to allow you to take the information with you whenever we are able.

Looking for a good how-to on importing the data? See Sean Percival’s blog post.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

A week ago, I asked for people to submit some topics that they’d like to hear me write about. Some of my comrades in the Cleveland Programming Wasteland chimed in, wanting to know how I wound up working for Mahalo.

In a word, podcasting.

No, really.

Desperation, Quiet to Unquiet

When the podcasting community started to form in late 2004/early 2005, I was working for a small development firm in Medina. While I enjoyed the work, I wanted to do something more creative in my off time, and because of that, I got into podcasting. My first contact was with Evo Terra, who at that time was the co-host of The Dragonpage. He mentioned his idea for serialized audiobooks delivered via RSS, and dubbed them Podiobooks. At the time, Podiobooks.com was a simple site with five books on the front page. I contacted him with an idea on how to automate the process, feeding out chapters one chapter at a time, always starting from the beginning. We started working on the software in Feb. 2005.

That summer, I took the plunge and started Unquiet Desperation, focused on what people were doing above and beyond their day jobs. It was about people following their passion. The reason for that topic was that I was feeling trapped in the development scene in Cleveland. I was fried, could not stand to think anymore about clients or their needs. I felt as though all I did was write code, when a decade earlier I had been writing short fiction, participating in a local medieval group’s activities, and generally being anything but a deskjockey. I wanted to take my quiet desperation and use podcasting to find a way out of it, hence the title.

Unquiet Desperation and Podiobooks.com brought me into contact with some of the most amazing and dedicated people, many of whom I count as close friends today. There was a good amount of overlap between my working UD and the authors who were starting to contribute to Podiobooks. When we launched the beta in Sept. of 2005, it was a major milestone.

It’s All About The Community

Mark Jeffrey was one of our first authors with his Max Quick 1: The Pocket and the Pendant. He and I had spoken on and off, and when my daughter fell in love with his book, he agreed to autograph a copy. Later, when he had an idea for a podcasting advertising platform, he contacted me to see if I was interested. I couldn’t take it on at the time.

At the same time, I had been trading emails for months with Ray Slakinski and Sean Jackson for the Windows beta release of iPodderX, and later, for some of the features in the sadly doomed Transistr. I did some small amount of beta testing with them, but when we launched Podiobooks, Sean was responsible for the redesign and Ray was a big help with testing and code.

I’m not sure how Ray and Sean got together with Mark, but eventually they teamed up to create a site called Popcurrent, which was like a Digg for media files. It was innovative, was built in Ruby On Rails, and showed great potential.

In December of 2006, Ray passed along to me that Kevin Rose was looking for .NET developers for a new project¹, but I passed on it. A month later, I got a second call, this time from Mark and Ray, asking if I had any interest in working for a new startup, run by Jason Calacanis and who’s primary investor was Sequoia Capital .

photo credit:
insidetwit

That got my attention. I was dubious…I’d been through the startup world before, and it never worked out well. Still, how often does a guy from Cleveland get a call like that? So yeah, I was interested. Over the next few days, they laid out the plan for the company, and I was truly excited. I sent along my resumé, and thankfully, I was hired.

It’s been the most challenging and exciting job I’ve had to date. I’ve learned more in the last year than in the previous five years combined. I work from home now, traveling out to Los Angeles around five times a year. A standard work day means logging in to our IRC channel around 8:30am, working with the guys, occasionally having a Skype conference to troubleshoot code or go over specifications, and churning out code in PHP and Python. The entire team is distributed: two in Toronto, one in Kansas City, one in Minneapolis, three in Santa Monica, and myself in Cleveland. It can mean a wacky schedule, but that’s startup life and I knew that getting into it. I absolutely love it.

Beyond the Day Job

I cannot promise the same sort of results, but here is my advice to others in the Brotherhood of Trapped and Frustrated Developers who are looking for a way to extend themselves beyond their current day job:

• Reach Out: Communicate with the bloggers you read, or with the folks who read your blog. Seek out similar interests. Find out who is doing something that you’re interested in, and talk with them about it. Share ideas. The internet is global…take advantage of it.
• Join or Start a Project: We started Podiobooks.com because there was a need for a better way to consume podcasted fiction. You can do the same within your own areas of interest. If you’re not up for starting something from scratch, get involved with one of the fine Open Source projects out there. You’ll meet people and learn things that you’ll never explore in the office.
• Hone and Expand Your Skills: I didn’t get to Mahalo because of starting Podiobooks.com. It was because I earned the respect of my peers. Don’t settle for what you do during your workday. While I was coding in VB.NET/C# during the day, I would come home and work with PHP and MySQL at night. Podiobooks.com was the first PHP application I’d ever written². Work with a different language in your off hours to sharpen your skills. (This is a post unto itself, and I’ll expand on it in the future.)
• Follow the Law of the Sandbox: Play nice with the other kids, or no one will want to play with you. This is simple stuff, yet I’m constantly amazed and dismayed when I meet developers who might be very skilled, but are completely socially incompetent. Be friendly and professional in your dealings with others. Be trustworthy.

Most of this is common sense, but sometimes, the common sense is the hardest to follow. It won’t necessarily get you a job at a startup, but it will allow you to broaden your chances of doing something more interesting that your nine-to-five.

Allow yourself to take on some new things, and you’ll be amazed where it can lead you.

Follow Up Questions and Updates

Q: Christopher tweeted: “Great post, but why wouldn’t you want to move from Cleveland to CA? I can’t take the climate here.”

A: Housing costs, schools, and my extended family. A house the size of the one I have now would cost my $800K, even if I could find one. We like the school system (Willoughby-Eastlake) here, and schools vary wildly in L.A. Also, we are very close with our extended family, and would hate to leave them. In all fairness, if I were twenty-something and single, I’d probably move. But I have roots here, and that makes it tough to leave.

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.

1. a project which later turned out to be Pownce
2. and in some places in the source, it shows. Ugh. Refactor, refactor…

As I find articles or posts about this, I’ll post them below:

• http://www.andydesoto.com/?p=5

Feel free to Flattr this post at flattr.com, if you like it.